Friday, January 31, 2014

Very late in life I have become a
philosopher. It doesn't pay much, but it helps to pass the time.

So, what has brought me to this late,
great career change?

I was musing (as you do in your dotage)
about the arrogance of the human species. Particularly I was
thinking about religion and disaster movies. An odd combination –
as well you might think.

It seems that humans have an innate
capacity for doom-mongering and pessimism. Given a modicum of
encouragement, we will cheerfully forecast the end of civilization,
the beginning of a new Ice Age, global warming destroying the planet
(Soylent Green style!), shale gas fracking causing planetary
cataclysms, etc. - and the et etceteras are manifold.

However diverse, these dooms, for which
we are seemingly unable to escape, have one unifying feature. We do
survive. There is always some remnant of homo sapiens who rebuild
the planet and some sort of civilization. We endure. We go on. Our
grand children’s grandchildren are born and live their lives. We
assume that throughout the débâcle the human species goes on.

It occurred to me that this is not
inevitable. There are disastrous scenarios where we do not survive.

For example, take our Sun – Old Sol.
It's been cheerfully chugging along for billions of years providing
us with all the energy needed for life on our planet to develop and
be sustained. It does so with such predictable regularity we assume
it's continued predictability is inevitable. It is not. Sometimes
stars go “wrong”.

Although this is a remote possibility,
it is still a real possibility.

From Wikipedia

“Although no supernova has been observed in the Milky
Way since Kepler's Star of 1604 (SN
1604), supernova remnants indicate that on average the event
occurs about three times every century in the Milky Way.[5]
They play a significant
role in enriching the interstellar medium with higher masselements.[6]
Furthermore, the expanding shock waves from supernova explosions can
trigger the formation of new stars.”

A comfort, but not an absolute
guarantee. Most likely we will have destroyed the planet long before
the sun jumps in and does us the favour.

But there is a quantitative difference,
other disasters are for the most part survivable. The sun going nova
is not.

And here's where philosophy and
religion come in. We are often reminded that we are just a speck (
and a very small one at that ) in the cosmos – an insignificant
little planet orbiting a very ordinary star.

Except for the earth ending in a kind
of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Vogon induced way ( read the book
if you don't know what I'm taking about ), we will all die in the
nova explosion and, more importantly, so will all evidence that we
were ever even here. That's a sobering concept. Imagine some
time-warping space traveller arriving in our vicinity some billions
of years hence. All that's left is a cloud of dirty dust where our
solar system used to be. Everything ever known about the earth and
the creatures it once sustained is gone and cannot be reconstructed.
It is, for all practical purposes, as if we were never here at all.

This is not science fiction – it's
science fact. Nova do occur in the galaxy at a somewhat predictable
rate. If we are “unlucky” enough to become such a statistic then
it's just hard cheese. We can do nothing about it. Our only hope
then is the Voyager 1 ( http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/
) which may, with luck, be found in a distant galaxy in a distant
time and cause some real consternation among whichever of God's
creatures it ends up.

Training their telescopes on the star
pointed out in the diagram plastered on the side of the spacecraft,
they might just make out a small nebula and puzzle about who ( or
what ) might have made the odd craft they have discovered. ( I
suspect our own reaction would be the same should an alien Voyager 1
turn up tomorrow! )

Using the newly acquired Philosopher’s
Stone I earlier alluded to religion now becomes far more than the
opiate of the people – it becomes imperative for remaining sane.

Leaving aside the objections of The God
Delusion and the Voyager spacecraft,

Sunday, January 19, 2014

Two American phenomena particularly
puzzle the British. Gazing across the Atlantic divide, American's
twin obsessions - Obamacare and gun control - seem very hard to
understand. Though we may be two peoples divided by a common
language, language alone is not sufficient to explain this perplexing
and, in many respects, inexplicable conundrum.

Might I suggest that everyone focus on
two excellent movies (films for the Brits): Open Range,
directed by and starring Kevin Costner; and As Good As It Gets,
for which Jack Nicholson won the third of his Best Actor Oscars. If
you are not familiar with the work – check out
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Good_as_It_Gets)
and Open Range (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Range)
– which many consider to be Kevin Costner's best work.

If you haven't seen both films – I
suggest you do: they will give you a neat perspective on guns and
docs.

In AGAIG, the crunch scene in my view,
comes when Dr Martin Bettes (Harold Ramis) is discovered by Carol
Connelly (Helen Hunt) – a waitress who Melvin Udall (Nicholson)
relies upon to feed his obsessive-compulsive disorder - at her home
in Brooklyn and she assumes that a major medical emergency is
under-way concerning her perpetually-ill son, Spencer (Jesse James)
aged about 10. Why else would a Doctor be at her house?

At the dining table with Dr Bettes and
her mother, Carol produces a mountain of medical bills concerning
Spencer and explains that he has not been well since he was
six-months old. Dr Bettes asks if he has had allergy tests. She
replies no – she asked but the “bastard HMO's” said they were
not necessary and anyway her medical plan didn't cover them.

Dr Bettes is not upset as he comments
that “bastard HMO's” is the technical term for the overworked,
hard-pressed junior doctors that commonly treat people in ER.

The Doctor gets a blood sample and his
nurse turns up, after commenting she had real trouble finding the
house in Brooklyn (same same for Bettes who couldn't find it either).
Hey we are talking Brooklyn here not the Moon!

Anyway, he sends the nurse off with the
blood and explains that he has to do a lot of tests, but Spencer will
soon begin to feel better.

The real humour in the scene comes when
Carol asks who she should ring to get the test results and Bettes
produces his card (with his home phone number on it) and tells her to
ring him. Both Carol and her Mother are flabbergasted that they have
a Doctor's home number and offer to become his sex slaves in return.

Carol is quite rightly concerned about
the costs involved and is told that they will be considerable, but
that Mr Udall (Nicholson) wants to be billed.

The scene has a happy ending as Carol's
Mother convinces her that despite her reservations about letting
Udall, a seriously crazy man according to Carol, into their lives
they must not refuse his help, no matter what.

Although this is just a small part of
the film, it is echoed in the predicament of Udall's gay neighbour,
Simon Bishop (Greg Kinnear) who after being beaten and mugged in his
own apartment is forced to move out as he cannot afford the
sky-rocketing medical bills.

So, why chose AGAIG to turn the
spotlight on Obamacare?

Precisely because it is so unreservedly
“upper middle-class”. It gives counterpoint to the idea that
Obamacare is just for the poor. It should resonate with any parent
who is trying to get affordable healthcare for their family and
cannot. The moral here is plain but understated in the film. Good
healthcare is only for the rich. If you are a waitress from Brooklyn
or a gay artist who has fallen on hard times, tough.

Open Range concerns the other
enduring myth - that guns are integral to and inseparable from
modern American life. It's the Old West, or at least it's the Old
West that Hollywood has so ingrained in our psyche that it has become
the Old West that I and millions of Americans believe now to be real.

Costner (Charlie Waite - is the
quintessential Western loner, a man scarred by the Civil War who only
wishes to be left alone to herd cattle on the open range until his
friends are killed or injured by the power-hungry local land owner
and cattleman, Denton Baxter (Michael Gambon). He finds love in the
person of the local Doctor's sister, Sue Barlow (Annette Benning) and
despite his new-found purpose in life sets out with Boss Spearman
(Robert Duvall) to “set things right”.

The shoot-out which pits Boss and
Charlie against Baxter's hired gunman and other assorted henchmen is
really the OK Corral revisited. Despite over-whelming odds,
Charlie's skill in killing (acquired at great cost to his mental
health during the Civil War) enables the good guys to kill all the
bad guys and Charlie to redeem himself by marrying Sue. An
obligatory ride off into the sunset completes the action.

So, what do we learn?

Europeans have real problems
understanding just how effectively the myth of the Old West still
endures in America. Getting to grips with guns is not a matter of
violating the Constitution - it's even worse – it's the small
matter of violating John Wayne. In most States it's still the Wild
West where carrying a firearm openly is quite legal if not almost
obligatory. In an increasing large number of States carrying a
concealed weapon is legal. Why?

Americans believe that carrying
firearms prevents crime. Or, more precisely, it deters crime and
enables the citizen to protect himself from harm. More importantly
it gives the citizen a real stake in his democracy. After all,
nothing focus the attention of the citizen more that shooting a bad
guy before he shoots you.

In the news today: “EVERYTHING
about Curtis Reeves suggested he was a responsible gun owner. A
71-year-old retired police captain and a doting grandfather who once
taught gun safety training courses, Reeves had dutifully obtained a
Florida state permit allowing him to carry a concealed weapon.

Reeves’s arrest last week on a murder charge, after he pulled
out his gun and shot a man who had thrown popcorn at him in a Florida
cinema, has added a grim new twist to the American debate about gun
control. Not since Wyatt Earp strapped on a six-shooter and strode off
to the OK Corral has American enthusiasm for carrying guns in public
become such a contentious issue. An extraordinary nationwide surge in applications for so-called
concealed carry permits has pushed the issue of hidden weapons —
and the kind of people who want to carry them to the fore.”

It's essentially the Wild West and
until the Hollywood image is overtaken by reality it's unlikely that
even tragedies like the above will enable legislation to protect
Americans from someone carrying a gun will have any chance of being
enacted.

Friday, January 03, 2014

We got stuck at Elveden again on the
way to London to see the folks for Christmas.

I couldn't believe it! It was the
middle of the day on a Saturday, December 28th. I kept thinking,
“Where are all these idiots going?” (Maybe they were all going
to London to see relatives?)

Anyway, being stuck in the jam gave me
another opportunity to mull over the progress (or more precisely the
lack of progress) of the last bit of dual carriageway to be built,
including the Elveden by-pass – opening Winter 2014. Or, if you
prefer, another year away.

Snaking along at the pace of a snail
with a limp, gives one plenty of time to consider this major road
building project. Well, it's a major project if you consider 9 miles
of road-building with one small stream to cross a major project. In
their defence I must point out that they are taking four years to do
it. That alone probably qualifies it as a major project.

One thing I discovered was that they
are building at least two fantastically placed devices for the
farmers to get from one side of the road to the other. One looks
like the Hammersmith fly-over and the other is a very good
impersonation of the Dartford tunnel.

Hang on, when the road is completed
it's obvious that the farm equipment needs to get from one side to
another. Doesn't it?

Wait a minute – the A11 has been
struggling through Elveden for a long time – a really long time –
like forever. So, I thought, how have the farmers been getting from
one side to another in all the years it has been there? I can find
no information to this rather puzzling question.

Then I considered other options for the
farmer (and ones which might suit the tax-payer more).

First – the geniuses that thought
this one up spent a long time building what they called access roads
for the farms. In other words, they build nice paved sections a few
hundred yards wide of the carriageways so the tractors and such can
meander up an down gaining access to the fields.

Wait a minute - how did they access the
fields before? I can find no information to this rather puzzling
question either.

I have a brilliant solution to this
costly problem. At the Thetford end (West side) we build the farmer
a nice big storage shed and populate it with all his present
machinery. Then at the Barton Mills end (East side) we build another
nice big storage shed and populate it with duplicates of everything
on the Thetford side – all at the tax-payers expense.

When the day's work begins, the farm
workers only have to decide which side of the A 11 they are working
on and go to the appropriate shed, collect their equipment and do
what farmers do. (If they need to do some work on one side and then
move to the other side we have even provided them with a nice new
dual carriageway to get from one storage shed to the other) How good
is that! And the cost is minuscule compared to the cost of the road
– which by the way has escalated from the 30 million original
estimate to 110 million.

Brilliant or what!

Whoever planned this project must have
learned engineering at the Lego factory and project management at the
University of Malawi.

What we have now is a completed bridge
at the Barton Mills end, some sections of dual carriageway that are
completed (but not joined up) and a bypass around Elveden which may
or may not be ready (you cannot tell from the roadway and they won't
let you tramp about the countryside to find out).

Here's another plan – a bit too late
I readily admit.

First, build the bypass around Elveden
first. Then build the one-mile section to join this up to the
Thetford end. Then build the rest of the road south of Elveden.

Result? You get around the bottleneck
at Elveden before you encounter any hold-up at all.

Make sense? I thought you might agree
with me.

Oh yeah, and then think about building
poxy little access roads for farmers. In the meantime they can jolly
well wait for four years like the rest of us chumps.